Over the years, I've had to replace the fuel pump relay several times: while my wagon was NA powered, and since I have had turbo power.

It got to the point that I wired in an extra power supply to the fuel pumps that was manually controlled. While not a good idea...because it bypassed the built-in safety of the stock relay circuit that would shut down the fuel pumps if the motor stalled...it worked well, especially when I would remember to turn it on.

The basic problem is this: the stock fuel pump relay cannot take the heat of the constant current flow to the two fuel pumps for long periods of time. It did not matter if the pumps were brand new or not, nor whether the ampere draw of the pumps were well below the limits specified by Volvo and Bosch, nor if the wiring had been uprated in gauge thickness. No, none of that helped.

The plastic used in the cover, and the design and manufacture of the relay internals is just plain inferior: it cannot take the heat.

When this last relay decided to 'let the smoke out', I decided that this was it, and I was not going to put up with this crap anymore. I would re-engineer the circuit, and make it so that it could, would, and will, handle the current load...and NOT let me down again.

I spend too much time too many miles from a safe harbor. Reliability and durability are very important to me.

This gallery is about what I did to resolve this.....irritation.

Was it overkill? No. Just a bit of determination to fix it once and for all.